Genomics Goes to the Dogs

The next time your neighbor?s cockapoo wakes you up at the break of dawn, consider this: Clues to the genetic components of some human diseases may be hidden in the genome of that yapping ball of matted fur. That possibility inspired the following Hot Papers, which describe a 1.5x survey sequence of Claire Fraser and J. Craig Venter?s pet poodle, Shadow,1 by Ewen Kirkness and colleagues at the Institute for Genomic Research, Rockville, Md., and the creation of a 1-Mb radiation map of the canine genome2 by collaborators Elaine Ostrander of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and Francis Galibert of the University of Rennes, France. The papers represented ?a great step forward in terms of making the canine accessible as a model for human disease,? says pediatric cardiologist Woody Benson of the Cincinnati Children?s Hospital. Nipping at the heels of that step came the publication of the full ...